Leaning Tower of Pisa Pisa

The tower was closed to the public for eleven years, from January 1990 to December 2001, because engineers genuinely feared it might collapse. Its tilt had reached 5.5 degrees by then, and rather than a quirky architectural accident everyone smiles about, this was treated as an active structural emergency. A team led by Michele Jamiolkowski spent close to a decade extracting soil from beneath the raised northern side, drilling 41 holes and removing roughly 70 tonnes of earth to coax the tower back toward vertical without destabilizing it further. By 2001 the lean had been reduced to about 3.97 degrees, roughly where it stood in 1838, and by 2008 engineers confirmed the movement had stopped entirely, with an estimated 200 years of stability ahead. So the tower you climb today isn’t simply “leaning since construction,” it’s a structure that was deliberately, carefully un-leaned within living memory, and most visitors have no idea that happened.

The lean itself traces back to soft, unstable subsoil beneath the foundation, discovered the hard way not long after construction began in 1173. Work paused for nearly a century, partly due to wars, giving the ground time to partially settle before builders resumed, which is likely the only reason the tower didn’t topple outright during construction. It was finally completed in the 14th century, meaning the whole project spanned roughly two hundred years.

Climbing It Today

As of 2026, tower tickets cost around 20 euros and include timed-entry access, with slots released roughly 90 days ahead through the official booking site. Peak season slots, June through August, tend to sell out within hours of release, so book well before your trip rather than assuming you can walk up and buy same-day. Your ticket time is also your arrival deadline; arrive late and you’ll be turned away with no refund, so build in buffer time rather than cutting it close. The climb itself runs up worn marble steps, commonly cited as 251 though older counts list slightly different numbers depending on how spiral landings are tallied, and there’s a hard rule that children under 8 aren’t permitted inside at all, with anyone aged 8 to 17 required to have an adult with them.

Piazza dei Miracoli Beyond the Tower

The tower sits inside the Piazza dei Miracoli alongside the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the Baptistry, and the Camposanto Monumentale, and a combined ticket covering multiple of these sites usually works out cheaper than paying for each separately. Treat the tower as the headline act rather than the whole show; the Baptistry has genuinely remarkable acoustics worth hearing in person if a demonstration is running when you visit, and the Camposanto’s cloistered cemetery is a quieter, less crowded counterpoint to the plaza’s usual selfie chaos.

Food Worth Actually Seeking Out

Skip vague references to unrelated regional dishes and look for cecina, a thin savory chickpea-flour pancake that’s genuinely Pisan street food, crisp outside and soft within, often served in a sandwich. For something sweeter and more ceremonial, torta co’ bischeri is a local specialty tart from just outside Pisa, filled with chocolate, rice, raisins, and pine nuts, its name coming from the folded pastry edges that resemble guitar tuning pegs. It’s been made since the 16th century for a religious pilgrimage feast and has carried a protected quality designation since 2007, so it’s not a generic tourist sweet, it’s a dish with actual regional specificity behind it. Pair either with a glass of Chianti and you’re eating something closer to what Pisans actually eat rather than a dish borrowed from another Italian region entirely.

Getting Around and Other Sights

Pisa is compact enough to walk between most sights, and the Arno River running through town gives you a genuinely different vantage point on the city if you take a boat ride rather than only viewing it from the bridges. Piazza dei Cavalieri, the old seat of the Knights of Saint Stephen, now houses the University of Pisa’s Scuola Normale Superiore and is worth a quiet detour away from the tower crowds. The Botanical Garden, established in 1543, ranks among Europe’s oldest and is a genuinely peaceful stop if the main piazza’s crowds start to wear on you.

One practical opinion: don’t schedule your tower climb for midday in summer. The stone steps and enclosed stairwell trap heat, and an early morning or late afternoon slot, if you can get one, makes the climb considerably more comfortable than fighting both the crowd and the heat at once.